Dr. Charles “Jerry” Flora, who died at 85 earlier this week, had one of Washington’s toughest jobs: As president of Western Washington University, he oversaw WWU’s explosive growth in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, and kept the lid on during intense Vietnam era protests.

Flora was not an administrator, but a popular zoology professor and a character. He was known for rappelling down into crevasses on Mount Baker’s Colman Glacier to retrieve bugs and butterflies living in the ice. In 1967, he became acting president and then president of the college.

Jerry Flora in 1967. Photo from Western Washington University

“President Flora not only led Western safely through some of its most turbulent times, but oversaw a 60 percent increase in student enrollment and creation of four new colleges,” his successor Bruce Shepard said in marking Flora’s passing.

Western was very much part of its times in the late 1960’s. Peter Paul & Mary sang protest songs there. Jefferson Airplane played on campus. Such great civil rights leaders as James Farmer and Fannie Lou Hamer came to Bellingham. Vietnam War protests began with a 1965 march around the Bellingham post office.

Which brings us to the “ALL LOTS ” story . . .

Flora was a Florida farm boy and bought a place out in the Nooksack Valley where he could get away from pressures of running Western. A big picture window offered an eye-filling view of Mount Baker.

During the tense days after President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia, Flora was tending to his farm animals one Saturday morning when an urgent call came from campus. A crowd of students was about to march on downtown Bellingham. They didn’t have a permit. The police were vowing to stop the march.

Flora jumped into his pickup truck and sped down country roads toward town. He saw a blue light in the rear view mirror and was pulled over by a Whatcom County sheriff’s deputy.

The deputy was confronted by this guy in coveralls, driving a pickup, who had no wallet on him, all the time saying excitedly he was president of Western and was heading toward an emergency on campus. “Sure!,” said the cop.

Flora kept talking about the students about to march down Garden Street. The deputy adopted a heard-it-all-before look on his face.

Suddenly, Flora had a brainstorm. He pointed to a sticker on the pickup. It read “ALL LOTS.” Would anybody other than the college president have an “ALL LOTS” sticker on his vehicle? (Western was notorious, still is, for a cobra-like, strike-at-anything parking enforcement.)

The cop pondered only for a New York minute, beckoned for the pickup to follow him. Flora reached campus with students and city police a block apart on Garden Street. The confrontation was defused.

Flora spent eight tumultuous years as president. Baby Boomers caused Western’s enrollment to take off. It soared from 6,240 to 10,000 students during his tenure.

The president championed imaginative architecture. Unlike Baby Boomer campuses in other states, Western grew gracefully and attractively.

And Flora advocated creation of “cluster colleges,” imaginative programs within Western. Huxley College of Environmental Studies was largely his creation, and his pride and joy.

Flora went scuba diving with wife Rosemary when his tenure as president ended, and then returned to teaching at Western.

He became something of a television star with KVOS-TV’s program “Tidepool Critters” in which Flora talked about aquatic life of northern Puget Sound. The ex-president also did a stint as nightly weatherman on KVOS-TV.

He was “one of the finest professors I have ever known,” ex-Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a prominent alumnus, said this week.

Flora and his wife were in an auto accident on Dec. 16. He died surrounded by family. A funeral service was held Friday at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Lynden. A big story telling gathering of Flora friends is planned for May.

The family suggests remembrances to the Western Washington University Foundation, 516 High St., Old Main 430, Bellingham, Wash. 98225.